Author Archive
John Gresham Machen, Doubt, and Liberalism
1913-1915 were three of the most important years in the life of John Gresham Machen. He had been on the verge of de-converting from Christianity for eight years previous to this, yet here he finally realized the truthfulness of historic Biblical Christianity, and completed his ordination. Interestingly enough, his struggle with Christianity was not with atheism (as is common today), but with liberalism, which was becoming popular among intellectual circles in the United States at that time.
Liberal Christianity (also called modern liberalism) assumed science discounted the supernatural claims of the Bible, but attempted to sustain religion by separating science and religion. Liberalism also employed the high-critical method of interpreting the Bible (which assumes the Bible as the work merely of men with no aid by the Holy Spirit). Liberalism passed off historical records of supernatural events as pseudo-historical, or at best metaphorical.
Heretic!!!
So this guy is walking on a bridge, and he sees this man about to jump. He runs up to him and asks him why he wants to kill himself.
‘Well, I just don’t think there’s any meaning to life.’ The first man responds,
‘What are your religious beliefs? Do you believe in God?’
‘Why yes, I do.’
‘No way, me too! Are you a Muslim, Christian, Jew…?’
‘I’m a Christian’
‘Are you Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant?’
‘I’m Protestant’
‘No way, me too! What denomination are you part of?’
Abiding in the Father
One doctrine I was not familiar with growing up in a church was the reality of adoption, or sonship. This is the reality that when one becomes a Christian, he or she becomes a son or daughter of God. God becomes our father, our daddy. As Christians, we are his children.
J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God, explains it this way,
“What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father.
Confessions of a Hard Heart
This week I was sitting with some people telling “inspiring stories” in their Christian lives. Many of the people around in the room were edified as a woman explained her most intimate moment with God, or as a young man told a story of how God provided for him after he prayed. Typically, I rolled my eyes and kept my mouth shut.
Then I realized, theses people do not have a problem, I do. These people’s faith was not naïve, nor were their stories unbiblical. The problem was that I was unwilling to hear them. It was not that their stories were not powerful, but that my heart was (and likely still is) hard. Here was a real moment to find fellowship with other Christians, and I blew it.
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